


Serenity

by narsus



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-01
Updated: 2011-09-01
Packaged: 2017-10-23 08:20:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/248185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narsus/pseuds/narsus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His physical body may be prey to its own mortal failings but, thankfully, he has medical science to assist him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Serenity

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Sherlock belongs to the BBC, Mark Gatiss & Steven Moffat, and obviously in the genesis of it all, to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

When the medication finally begins to take effect, Sherlock is hard pressed to complain. On an intellectual level he feels like he ought to. Suspects that he ought to be arguing that different isn’t necessarily worse. Except when it is. Except when it’s enough to destroy his reason. Difference would imply that both modes of action are viable enough to allow him to function, after all. Difference would suggest that he has a viable choice between the two and simply prefers one to the other. Perhaps others might, but not him. He _needs_ those unremarkable, white, little pills to keep him sane. Not in the literal sense, not quite, but it’s close enough. Without a regular dosage he’ll simply run himself into the ground. His nerves will be frayed and ragged by the week’s end. He’ll push himself beyond his limits and, while he will triumph, as always, the inevitable comedown with be just as spectacular. He’ll be shooting holes in the wall, tempting mass murderers to further crime and teetering precariously on the brink of a complete breakdown before long. He needs those pills to keep him sane.

Of course he hasn’t always recognised that. In an academic sense, he’s feared the altering of his own brain function, in an emotive one, he’s feared the medical rearrangement of his very self. Has supposed that he would be changed irreversibly by medication. Perhaps, it would cripple his genius, so the fear had lingered in the back of his mind. In the end, of course it has changed him. Those two hundred miligram tablets have managed to change everything. The argument is, of course, that any change to the self ought to be rejected as an expression of someone else’s control, but that’s not what it feels like to him. His mind is just as sharp and his actions can be just as reckless, but there is a further dimension to everything he does now, a sense of control that he always lacked before. He risks himself in the undertaking of cases by his own choice. All of it is his own decision. He isn’t driven to find an outlet for his energy, or risk implosion, anymore.

Now, he chooses his battles, measures his insults against the results he seeks to achieve. He isn’t driven to respond if the matter is irrelevant. There are some battles that need not be fought, or at least, not fought directly by him. Such things are beneath his station and now, he is well equipped to simply pass them by. The greatest insult can be silence after all, the dismissive turn of a head, the continuance of civil conversation, as if the speaker simply doesn’t exist. He’s less likely to engage in battles of wits against the unarmed these days. Far more likely to peer down his nose at them, if he chooses to acknowledge them at all. It is a trick when he applies it, an artificial snub that strikes deeper than any barbed words, but its close enough to real indifference to pass the time. _Real nobility is based on scorn, courage, and profound indifference_ , after all. He can manage the scorn easily enough, now it’s just the other two aspects that he needs to work on.

 

Interestingly, with the aid of chemical balances, he finds Mycroft less irritating these days. In fact, he’s starting to see his brother’s silences for what they truly are. Mycroft simply sees no need to contribute pointless conversation for the sake of anyone else’s comfort. They spend an afternoon sitting opposite each other in silence. Mycroft sips his tea: Sherlock practices the fingering for a Bach partita on his violin. Eventually, when afternoon begins to bleed into evening, Mycroft breaks the amiable silence.

“Do you know, that’s still one of the Grade Eight Associated Board pieces.”  
“You always hated the flute.”  
“You’re holding your violin like a banjo.”  
“You play the piano like a Russian.”

Mycroft smiles, and then quietly begins to laugh.

“I’ll teach you how to play.”  
“There’s really no need.”  
“You bluffed your way into that fiddle fiesta.”  
“I was only a third.”

Sherlock smirks. Mycroft’s third violin had of course been much superior to many of the other, genuine, violin students.

“Besides, I hardly have the time to do much of anything these days.”  
“And you do tune rather awkwardly to a D.”  
“Pitch perfect, I’ll have you recall.”  
“Of course.”

It’s as inane conversation as any and yet, there is no pressure or danger in it. There is no urge to settle the score against perceived slights or trump a teasing insult. Their musical interests, much like their career choices, have always been at a slight tangent to each other. Mycroft’s piano teacher used to berate him about dynamics and claim that he was obviously longing for a harpsichord. Sherlock’s violin instructor, in contrast, had always bewailed his cavalier attitude to the marked duration of any note. What Sherlock lacked for in precision he had always made up for in passion.

“Well, yes. _Obviously._ ”

Mycroft’s tone is warm, a little teasing, but gentle.

“The Feinstein Ensemble are at the Royal Festival Hall this weekend.”  
“So they are. Would you care to join me?”

Sherlock inclines his head in assent and settles his violin more comfortably against his shoulder. Mycroft closes his eyes as Sherlock begins to play.

The piece demands both a depth of feeling as well as careful precision. What passion there is, is restrained and articulated in distinct arcs of sound and contrast. Mycroft’s failing has always been restraint but somehow he has always found release in music, and yet, emotion has never overwhelmed reason in his playing. There is a beauty in that sort of control after all, so Sherlock is now learning. The self-control it takes to exercise restraint, and not be ruled by one’s passions, is a reward in of itself. The calm at the heart of the storm could so easily become the softest whisper as the world ends, but, for the first time, Sherlock is finding that he doesn’t mind that possibility either. The rest is trivial, irrelevant data. He exercises his powers of deduction for his own amusement, in small instances, as simple tremors of motion. He doesn’t need to engage himself in the frenetic drama of petty existence.

 

His physical body may be prey to its own mortal failings but, thankfully, he has medical science to assist him. He finds the calm and stillness of his mind far more comfortable than the desperate clawing at sensation that he’s biologically prone to. The key is disengagement, until he chooses otherwise. Everything else is transitory, everything else need not be a focus, other than the serenity that envelopes him. Of course that too has its negatives. Sergeant Donovan throws out fewer verbal insults but watches him far more warily these days. His perfectly remorseless smiles trouble her far more than his enthusiasm ever did, though, oddly, they seem to make him all the more acceptable a presence in Whitehall these days. His brother’s bodyguard returns his frozen expression brightly, genially, as if she finds a cool smile, that never reaches the eyes, to be a most welcoming sight.

Control is one thing when it is desperately grappling against the rising storm. When it is precise and rational and calm, it becomes something else entirely. The man who lacked control could never have achieved such practiced detachment, could never have achieved such arcane _splendour_ in his reasoning. He was but a precursor, a chrysalis, the mere hint at the promise of a perfect rationale.

 

“It always helps to be underestimated.”

Mycroft voices the comment quietly as they stroll across Charring Cross bridge, along the pedestrian walkways that properly make up the Golden Jubilee Bridges, after the concert.

“Formlessness?”

Sherlock stops to lean against the railing and stare out over the dark river.

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

Mycroft recites the lines without hesitation, with the same instant recall that a child might have for their times tables.

“What enemy?”  
“Everyone else.”

Sherlock laughs, loudly, his voice barely drowned out by the passing of trains rattling the tracks.

**Author's Note:**

> Sherlock is taking 200mg doses of lithium carbonate, which a mood stabilizing drug used primarily in the treatment of bipolar disorder.
> 
> “Real nobility is based on scorn, courage, and profound indifference.” – Albert Camus
> 
> J. S. Bach Giga (from BWV 1004). No. 8 from Bach-Studien for ﬂute solo, Vol. 1 (Breitkopf & Härtel EB 6857) is part of the ABRSM Grade 8 syllabus for Flute, and has been for over 10 years now.
> 
> “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” – Sun Tzu


End file.
